2010

Jews for Jihad?

How the American Jewish Committee abets Islamism

By - Binyamin Axelrod

January 19, 2006 - Washington, DC - PipeLineNews.org - What do the American Jewish Committee, and Wahhabists have in common?

They are both helping to perpetrate jihad through Da'wa [faith spreading through aggressive conversion] via the "Chicago Coalition for Interreligious Learning," a program launched by the American Jewish Committee which is aimed at "creating guidelines for teaching other faith traditions - for Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim educators."

In the 2005 newsletter, the coalition's founder and AJC board member, Esta Star proclaimed that "the group saw the endeavor as a breakthrough for Jewish, Christian and interfaith relations in Chicago, and would produce changes in how differing religions were presented in textbooks and classrooms in an effort to promote respect among the communities." - Source Link

But instead of promoting "mutual understanding" those running the AJC's misguided "Coalition for Interreligous Learning" program have allied themselves with Islamists who cynically exploit interfaith programs to spread Wahhabism and Saudi hate propaganda. The inclusion of Kazi publications and the IQRA Education Foundation in the AJC's interreligous learning initiative will enable Da'wa materials to be introduced into school curriculums as the Muslim "contribution" to this "learning program."

Both the Northbrook and Batavia Islamic Centers have a history of activities with radical Islamists, including CAIR and ISNA.

Islamisation via conversion was hailed as the ultimate weapon by Yusuf al-Qaradawi who told a 1997 conference of Muslim youth that, "We will conquer Europe - we will conquer America! Not through the sword but through Da'wa." - Source Link.

Ironically it was none other then the director of the AJC's counter terrorism division, Yehudit Barsky, who labeled CAIR and ISNA, as "extremist" and warned about Islamist groups using interfaith to gain legitimacy. In a widely disseminated interview entitled - "Expert - Saudis have radicalized 80% of all US Mosques," Barsky declared:

The Islamic Society of North America, "supports the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi regime," and that [CAIR] the Council on American Islamic Relations "[was] founded in the 1980s by pro-Hamas activists."

Barsky noted that many mainstream Muslim organisations were "pro Saudi and pro Muslim Brotherhood." She suggested that her colleagues should "proceed with caution, [since] some of the [extremist] organizations have concluded that interfaith dialogue is a good way to spread the ideology."

She added:

"'Interfaith dialogue' gives such organizations a public legitimacy that their ideology would deny them if they expressed it outright...and that these organizations come to the Jewish community to talk about interfaith, while they still teach anti-Western and anti- Christian doctrines to their followers." - Source Link

Such considerations raise troubling questions:

Why has Barsky done nothing to stop the AJC - which has just announced the launch of a new website called "Counterterrorism Watch" under her direction - from working with similarly constructed Islamist groups who are spreading Wahhabism under the auspices of the Chicago Coalition for Interreligous Learning?

Why does the AJC continue to work with radical Islamists who are affiliated with the very same organizations that their own counter terrorism "expert" has labeled as extremist?

[Editor's note: It is worth mentioning that the AJC website recently removed 1. the interfaith links page, which listed the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding an organization which recently changed its name to the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding, in honor of their Saudi benefactor who also raised money for the families of suicide bombers.]

One would like to speculate that the link was removed because it was deemed unseemly for the AJC to list the Alwaleed Center as a partner but this seems unlikely given their other - blatantly Islamist - affiliations.

The AJC is also working with people like Dr. Scott Alexander, [please refer to the PipeLineNews.org series The Catholic Theological Union And The Limits Of Understanding] the head the Muslim Christian program at the CTU's Bernardin Center. In 2004 Alexander had planned to act as an expert witness at the terrorism trial of Fawaz Damra. He declined to appear after a controversy erupted over his justification or Damra's urging of Muslims to kill Jews "on the grounds that he was speaking as a victim."

Fellow Bernardin Center board members include seven representatives of radical Islamist groups such as CAIR and ISNA, including Sayid Sayeed - the General Secretary of ISNA - and John Esposito - the director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding." - Source Link.

In 2004 the head of the AJC's New York office, David Harris, lead a delegation of 100 members to meet with the terrorist Jabril Rajoub in Jerusalem. - Source Link

The Buffalo branch of the AJC recently held an 'interfaith meeting' entitled "Religious expression in the public square," at which they hosted Welton Gaddy, the director of the Interfaith Alliance, whose board members include noted Islamists Mahdi Bray of MAS and Maher Hathout of MPAC. - Source Link

The Muslim groups which the American Jewish Committee has chosen as partners in their interreligous education endeavor, offers a casebook study of how Saudi backed Islamist propagation - Da'wa - enterprises can enter the mainstream under the aegis of interfaith and become undeservedly legitimized.

Kazi Publications is an Islamist publishing house based in Chicago. Kazi's webmaster and production director, Mary Bakthiar, aka Laleh, is a living testimony to the crazy quilt that missplaced multiculturalism and interfaith produce - as an American Christian who converted to Islam after marrying an Iranian who had been dispatched to the United States to study on an Islamic missionary scholarship in 1927. [Prior to divorcing her husband, Bakthiar lived for years in Iran where she and her spouse ran the Hamdami publishing house in Teheran] - Source Link

The Kazi website states that they are "the oldest Islamic bookstore in America." Kazi offers an array of Islamist books and multimedia materials by radical theologians like Jamal Zarabozo, Al Ghazali, and Abdul Al Mawdudi - whose "Principles of the Islamic State" - stresses the necessity of the establishment of the Khalifate. Kazi also stocks videos and CD's of rabid anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan and Malcolm X. Source Link

The AJC's Coalition for Interreligous Learning is also working together with IQRA and the International Educational Foundation - an international source of Wahhabist propaganda which disseminates DVD's such as "Why the West is Coming to Islam," and books like "Sacred Law in Secular Lands" by Abdullah Bin Bayyah - a radical Islamist cleric who is cited as a source of spiritual inspiration by jihadist websites. Source Link

IQRA's refers to itself as an "Islamic Waqf," [Islamic trust] which means that it falls under the auspices of the North American Islamic Trust [NAIT] an arm of the Saudi government, which controls and funds 80% of all the Islamic institutions in North America to insure that Muslims can live "in a shari'a compliant way." Source Link

NAIT is one of America's largest Islamist umbrella organization; its goal is to "Islamise North America through conversion." - Source Link

A mosque partner in the AJC's Coalition for Interreligous Learning is the Batavia Islamic Center, whose vice president Mazher Ahmad, worked as the executive director of the Islamic Research Foundation, based in Bombay, which also has a branch in the United States. The aim of the IRF is "to promote "Islamic Da'wa proper presentation, understanding and appreciation of Islam, as well as removing misconceptions about Islam amongst less-aware Muslims as well as non-Muslims."

Ahmad's experience as head of an Islamic missionary organization is another example of how the AJC in Chicago is aiding Muslims with Islamic propagation by granting them legitimacy through participation in a coalition for 'interreligous learning'.

Mazher Ahmad the vice chair of the Council of World Religions [CWR], another interfaith vehicle used by Muslims to lure other faiths into contact with Islam [one member of the executive committee is Abdul Malik Muhajid, the director of Sound Vision, a radical Islamist media company directly tied to Hamas and the radical Bridgeview Mosque Foundation.]

The American Jewish Committee is inexplicably partnering with the CWR - the head of the AJC's Council for Interreligious Affairs -Rabbi David Rosen - was listed as a member of the CWR's Advisory Board Committee in 2002. His name appears directly under that of Adullah Omar Naseef, a Saudi millionaire who was cited in US government indictment for involvement in Al Qaeda funding. - Source Link

The AJC has affiliated itself with the Northbrook Islamic Center, which was "founded by Bosnian Muslims, and boasts of their commitment to interfaith activities."

"Imam Senad Effendi Agic is representative of the Bosnia-Hercegovina National Ministry of Religion in America. As imam of the Northbrook Mosque of Chicago and Chairman of the Bosnian Relief Committee of Chicago, where perhaps the most Bosnian refugees in the nation are located, Imam Senad is extremely active in helping the refugees in relocating to their new homes in the US, in collecting donations and supplies for the Muslims in the former Yugoslavia who are in dire need, and in supporting the jihad movement in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

After attending the International Islamic Unity Conference as the leader of the Bosnian Youth Mawlid Group and as a speaker, Imam Senad returned to Sarajevo, Bosnia to meet with rais al-ulema, Dr. Mustafa Ceric." - Source Link

Ceric was a pivotal figure at the Northbrook Islamic Center.

"In the 1980s, Ceric earned his Ph.D. in Islamic studies at the University of Chicago. For four years he was also the imam at the Islamic Cultural Center in Northbrook, one of the area's oldest mosques and an important gathering place for Bosnian Muslims in the United States." - Source Link

Mustafa Ceric is now the Grand Mufti of Bosnia, among other associations, he also works with the UK branch of the AMSS - The Association of Muslim Social Scientists, which is the sister organisation of the the International Institute of Islamic Thought [IIIT], a Wahhabist funded group which is being investigated for terror funding. Source Link

According to a recent Bosnian news report Mustafa Ceric also played a leading role in CIRKL, another funding front which was organised by Osama bin Laden and Sheik Abdel Rahman, that functioned as:

"...the only link between the Bosnian Muslim political leadership of the time and its wealthy Islamic benefactors...key people in the CIRKL in charge of Bosnia as Dr. Fatih al Hassanein, Hasan Cengic, Salim Sabic, Muhamed Catic, Mustafa Ceric, Husein Zivalj, and Senad Sahinpasic." - Source Link

Of additional interest regarding how organizations like the AJC have been duped in the recent past by media savvy Islamists, the international PR firm - Ruder Finn of Washington, D.C, was hired by the Bosnian Muslims to spin publicity in their favor, successfully obscuring the association that the Bosnian Muslims had with the Nazis during World War II.

James Harff the director of Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs, bragged that the firm's campaign had not only "outwitted" groups like the AJC, but had used them:

"We outwitted three big Jewish organizations - B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. We suggested to them to publish an advertisement in the New York Times and to organize demonstrations outside the United Nations." - from French TV2's Jacques Merlino's interview with James Harff. The interview was published in Merlino's 1993 book "Les vérités Yougoslaves ne sont pas toutes bonnes à dire," an analysis of the PR campaign that accompanied the war.

For the record, in 1993 Ruder Finn was awarded the "Silver Medal of the Public Relations Society of America" in the category "crisis communication," relating to its work assisting Bosnia in selling the Muslim slant on the war in the Balkans to the American public.

Seemingly having learned little, more then a decade later, the AJC continues to support the Bosnian Muslim cause. In 2005 the assistant director of the AJC Melanie Maron, spoke at a rally organised by the Council of Islamic Organisations of Greater Chicago - a Saudi funded umbrella group also tied to the Muslim World League. The CIOGC Chairman Abdul Malik Mujahid , who is the CEO of Sound Vision a radical Islamist media company linked to Hamas and the IAP, also spoke at the rally. The event was hosted by a member of the Northbrook Islamic Center.]

The NIC continues to work closely with the Council on America Islamic Relations, a group which was described by the AJC's head of counterterrorism , Yehudit Barsky, as being "founded in the 1980's by pro-Hamas activists." In 2005 the NIC helped CAIR recruit elderly converts to Islam with a program entitled Building Bridges to Islam, co-sponsored by a group called Elderhostel. - Source Link

The Northbrook Islamic Center also hosted a 5 week program by the Saudi funded Nawawi Foundation, on "The Universal Precepts and Concepts of Islamic Law," a study which they hoped would "foster a deeper understanding of Islam within and beyond our community." - Source Link.

The Muslim partners in the American Jewish Committee's "Coalition for Interreligous Learning" are part and parcel of the Saudi propagation enterprise which the head of the AJC's Middle East and International Terrorism division, Yehudit Barsky, said was "...spreading anti-Western and anti-Christian teachings to their followers..."

It's time that donors to the AJC start demanding that the organisation halt their interfaith programs which are abetting jihad through Da'wa, and that AJC leaders cease their interaction with individuals and institutions tied to terrorism both in the United States and abroad.

Notes:

1. "MIM: According to the information in the article above, the AJC appeared to have removed the link to the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown from their website together with their Muslim Jewish links page. The author speculated that this could have been because the Saudi funded center had now 'outed' itself as Wahhabist and been renamed the Prince Awaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding.

A search reveals that the links page does indeed exist, and it is reprinted below.

The AJC whose mission statement is to 'protect Jewish interests' seems to have no 'conflict of interests' when it comes to working with Wahhabists.

The director of their Interreligous Affairs Committee, Rabbi David Rosen, also sits on the board of the Western Islamic World Dialouge which is chaired by uber Wahhabist Prince Turki Al Saud, the present Saudi ambassador, who was a consultant to Osama Bin Laden when he was waging Jihad against the Russians. The Western Islamic World Dialouge organisation is also funded by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and is an international Da'wa (Islamic propagation and conversion) enterprise comprised of "100 religious leaders."

The name or the group expresses a goal which is to have a Western Islamic World and Dialouge only for Islam and about Muslims.

For more about the World Economic Forum and the Western Islamic World Dialouge aka Western Islamic World Da'wa movement see:

On the Western Islamic World Dialouge website the AJC head of interreligous affairs Rabbi David Rosen's name is listed above that of Abdullah Omar Naseef, who is cited in the above article as being linked to funding for Al Qaeda and as being named on a U.S government indictment against the SAAR terror financing network." - Beila Rabinowitz, MilitantIslamMonitor.org